
Contemporary Romance / Women’s Fiction
Berkley
May 11, 2021
Audiobook
364
Public Library
May 31 - June 8, 2023

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.
Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Review
It’s a hard thing to determine, but I think this may be my favorite Emily Henry book so far.
Poppy and Alex met in college. They both grew up in the same small town in Ohio and ended up at the same Chicago college, but that’s where the similarities end. And yet, thanks to a shared road trip home from college that first year, they quickly became the best of friends.
Just. Friends.
Bouncing back and forth between present day and the many annual summer trips the pair have taken over the past decade or so, we watch Poppy and Alex’s friendship grow and change. No matter what happens to the other, a bad breakup or a serious illness, the other is always there for them. They have the friendship dreams are made of.
Except something happened two years before the story begins. We don’t find out what that something is until later in the book, but we know that whatever it was, it led to Poppy and Alex not speaking for two whole years.
Feeling lost in her life and career, Poppy sends a text to Alex and asks him if he’s open to joining her on one more vacation, for old times sake. Turns out, he can’t, his brother is getting married in Palm Springs, but…would she like to come? With that, Poppy winds up in Palm Springs with Alex on the worst vacation ever. From the joke of a rental car to the Air B&N’s AC failing. Basically, if it could go wrong, it will.
But despite all that goes wrong, Poppy is just so happy to have Alex back in her life again. But is their friendship beyond repair? Can they go back to the way things used to be?
I love these characters. So much. I love all of Emily Henry’s characters, but these two were by far my favorite. Poppy, the wild free-spirit big city girl and Alex, the quiet and reserved home town school teacher/writer.
Their journey’s, both independently and together, were a joy. I felt like I was there with them on every trip they took.
This is a 5 star read and I would absolutely read it again.
